Friday, October 30, 2015

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

" I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - Shylock in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' Act 3 Scene 1

“There is no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel's statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination." - Abba Eban, 1975

A good friend of mine forwarded me some questions from someone she knows whom is absolutely baffled.

He's certainly no anti-semite. But in his contacts with Jews, he finds that many of them while quite intelligent engage in behavior he finds both irrational and inexplicable. Here's what he basically had to say:

"What baffles me is everyone of them put Obama in office during his first election, and couldn't understand my disdain for the man. These are intelligent people. Lawyers, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc..They have been voting Democrat for all their lives. {...}

These people are so unfriendly to all things Israel I just don't understand it. It's as if they are trying to destroy the country of their origin, or a death wish, I don't know. They all hated Bush and he loves Israel. I'm confused, because the trouble I see in Israel right now is partly due to them. I feel bad because I so admire Israel and I know if they fall we will be next or at least deep in the fight. Please, enlighten me."

I only get asked this once a week or so...but I thought I'd share my answer to him with you.

Hello ---

Actually, I have a decent perspective on this, as I'm a Jew, a native Californian (gasp!) and someone whom grew up in a home of liberal FDR Jews who always voted Democrat, except for two occasions which I'll get to shortly and which shed a bit of light on th ematter at hand.

You're actually asking a lot of different questions here, which I'm going to try and sort out. Here's what I think you're asking, and forgive me if I seem to be putting words in your mouth.

Why are so many Jews lefties when they seem to be so smart? Why do they vote Democrat even if it seems to be against their interests? And why would so many vote for Obama, especially when they've seen how anti-Israel he is?

That about cover it?

A lot of it has to do with history. Many lefty Jews today are not only rigorously secular, but disdainful of those Jews whom are religious. That also explains why so many of these overtly secular Jews dislike Evangelicals, Mormons and other religious, pro-Israel Christians. To these Jews, all religion represents not only something they're trying to get away and distance themselves from, but way down deep, a secret source of shame for many. You don't destroy a part of whom you are without sustaining some damage.

Read this and see if it clears up the history a bit. The short version is that many Jews, once they were freed from the ghettos by Napoleon that they'd been literally locked up in for centuries made a determined attempt to assimilate. They really wanted to be good Germans, French, Austrians, Poles, what have you. It failed utterly. The majority of Europeans simply wouldn't allow it.

A number of thse Jews made the obvious connection and allied themselves with the Left, especially the Marxists. They stupidly thought that their religion was the only basis for the psychotic hatred they faced, and that religion itself was the reason they were treated the way they were. So they not only gave up all semblance of their own religion, but turned to an ideology that likewise despised all religion while it was essentially creating its own.

To expand that a bit, here in America while there was never legal, government sponsored Jew hatred as there was in Europe and Muslim countries, there was quite a bit of de facto anti-semitism during the period when Jews were heavily migrating to America...say, the 1880's to about the 1920's or so and well into WWII.

So just as in Europe, some of these immigrants and quite a few of their offspring born here dropped the Orthodox Judaism they were raised with and much of their religious practices because the emphasis then was on assimilating..being, you know, real Americans like everyone else. That didn't work so well with many of the Republicans of that time or a lot of other people, but the Left was a somewhat different story, especially once FDR came on the scene. Ironic, of course, since he was instrumental in instituting quotas to stop too many Jews entering the Ivy League.

As for the communists, they were more than willing to recruit what Lenin aptly referred to as useful idiots.Conservative author David Horowitz, whom grew up as a 'red diaper baby' in a home where both parents were communists and under what was referred to as Party Discipline give us an illuminating look at how this worked in his autobiography 'Radical Son.'

What changed things when it comes to the issue you're talking about was the Holocaust and the recreation of Israel. Realizing that much of the world either participated at worst or at best ignored what amounted to a war against defenseless Jews simply because they were Jews was a traumatic event that changed everything for Jews in places like America whom escaped.

It was a unique event in history for reasons I'm happy to explain to you any time if you'd like me to. In many quarters, it made openly expressed Jew hatred socially unacceptable, at least for a while. And it shamed the world into finally keeping the agreements made after WW I in the original League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the subsequent 1923 San Remo Agreement to create a Jewish State in their ancient homeland on the remaining 21% of the Palestine Mandate that was left.

So for even aggressively secular, left leaning Jews like my parents, Israel was the issue that crossed all lines. It did so because they were the generation that was closest to the Shoah and they realized how important Israel's creation was to Jews in the Diaspora and their comfortable lives there. And yes, there was also some residual guilt involved, because many of the Jews surrounding President Roosevelt took an active part in successfully combating Jews who wanted the make the ongoing Shoah a major public issue and push FDR to make attempts to stop or at least slow down the carnage of Jews in Europe.

That Jewish identification with Israel especially became apparent after the miraculous Six Day War when Jews around the world suddenly realized they might have lost Israel and had to experience a second Holocaust while the world watched and did nothing.

I mentioned that there were two times my devoutly Democrat parents didn't pull the lever for Democrats? One occasion was in 1972 when the Angry Left took over the party and the anti-Israel George McGovern was their candidate for president. The other time was in 1980, when Jimmie Carter ran for re-election.

My parents literally hated Nixon and Reagan and they weren't too pleased with yours truly either when I cast my very first vote ever for Ronaldus Maximus. But they simply weren't going to vote for anti-Israel candidates. So they just voted for a straight Democrat ticket otherwise and passed up voting for president in those elections.

So what changed that closeness to Israel? Well, three things - the birth and maturity of two generations much further removed from the Holocaust, the ascendancy of a center right government in Israel when the Labor party was literally tossed out of office after the Yom Kippur War fiasco and most of all, the continued movement of the Democrat Party to the far left.

It's an interesting piece, looking at some recent events that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago but are now 'depressingly routine' as he aptly puts it.

Here are this week’s full results. Maggie's Notebook, The Independent Sentinel, Don Surber and The Noisy Room were unable to vote this week, but none were subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Yes, once again, It's time to present this week's statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week's nominees were particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner...the envelope please...

Indeed, how could you beat Mrs. Clinton's performance last week? It does indeed take a special kind of human being to knowingly lie to the entire country and to the grieving families of four dead Americans literally over their coffins. And all just to cover for Barack Obama and get him re-elected.

A number of Mrs. Clinton's friends and minions in the media referred to her performance as a 'triumph' and a 'win.' In actuality, the fact that she's unlikely to face any cost or punishment for her behavior or her illegal server and destruction of documents that were by law all supposed to be turned over when she left office is a major defeat..for the country. It always is, whenever a nation's standard of justice, integrity and trust in public officials is compromised.

That includes the partisan Democrats on the Benghazi committee as well as the media.When ranking members of an investigating committee set up by congress contemptuously break House rules and openly leak what was supposed to be closed door testimony to the media in order to undermine it, there's not much more to be said.

Well Mrs. Clinton, enjoy your Weasel. I had the names of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty engraved on it. Since, as you say, you already live with this every day and lose sleep over it, what difference does it make at this point?

All the perfumes of Araby don't fix it. Just ask Lady Macbeth.

Selah.

Well, there it is.Check back next Tuesday to see who next week's nominees for Weasel of the Week are!Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum, and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

I have to admit, I have never seen a spectacle like this before. Just when I think the Leftist media has struck bottom, they dig a new hole even deeper. CNBC's 'moderators' made no secret of their political bias or their disgust and hatred of every candidate on the stage tonight. The questions they asked them were designed either to get the candidates to attack one another or of the 'have you stopped beating your wife' category.

Senator Ted Cruz fianlly had enough after he was insulted by being called 'not the problem solver America's voters need' in yet another 'question.' He got the biggest wave of applause all night when he called out Pravda-on- the-Hudson's John Harwood and CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla on the bizarre, hostile questions and compared them to how Democrats were treated at their debate:

"The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media."

"This is not a cage match. And you look at the questions -- Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don't you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues?"

"The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and wise?"

"Let me be clear," Cruz said. "The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense, than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks."

"Nobody believes that the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary"

I wouldn't even call it Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks myself...more like bunch of carnies seeing whom could game the rubes the most by promising 'free' stuff.And would anyone be surprised to find that certain questions asked in the democrat debate were run by one or more candidates in advance?

"The questions being asked shouldn't be trying to get people to tear into each other, it should be what are your substantive solutions to people at home," Cruz finished before getting cut off.

It was a superb moment, both for Ted Cruz and for the American people. Right before the eyes of the entire country on nationwide television, he just revealed that the emperor really has no clothes. And that a big part of our dysfunctional politics is due to creatures like CNBC's Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick and John Harwood.

Still, unfortunately, there's the stupid party (as opposed to the corrupt one) to deal with.

While Reince Priebus, head of the RNC tweeted harsh criticism of CNBC's antics. But he still has no excuse for allowing Republican candidates to appear in a biased forum like this. And if he didn't know it was going to be this bad, he should have.

Marco Rubio came out with an excellent jab, saying 'The Democrats have their own super PAC. It's called the mainstream media.'

That's really what we're dealing with here. The efforts of some of these people aren't journalism. They amount to a campaign contribution in kind, and the GOP candidates need to simply say no to any further exercises like this.

There's absolutely no need for these unethical, egotistical 'moderators.' Make the debates Lincoln Douglas style, where each party speaks for a set time and the only outside party is a timekeeper.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

Virginia's top blogger, Tom White at VA Right scored another triumph with an appearance scheduled today on the 5PM and 6PM - and probably 11PM news his local NBC affiliate over a story he broke on a state senator's HIPAA violation. Get us a copy of the video if you can, Tom...congrats!.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A good friend of mine forwarded me some questions from someone she knows whom is absolutely baffled.

He's certainly no anti-semite. But in his contacts with Jews, he finds that many of them while quite intelligent engage in behavior he finds both irrational and inexplicable. Here's what he basically had to say:

"What baffles me is everyone of them put Obama in office during his first election, and couldn't understand my disdain for the man. These are intelligent people. Lawyers, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc..They have been voting Democrat for all their lives. {...}

These people are so unfriendly to all things Israel I just don't understand it. It's as if they are trying to destroy the country of their origin, or a death wish, I don't know. They all hated Bush and he loves Israel. I'm confused, because the trouble I see in Israel right now is partly due to them. I feel bad because I so admire Israel and I know if they fall we will be next or at least deep in the fight. Please, enlighten me."

I only get asked this once a week or so...but I thought I'd share my answer to him with you.

Hello ---

Actually, I have a decent perspective on this, as I'm a Jew, a native Californian (gasp!) and someone whom grew up in a home of liberal FDR Jews who always voted Democrat, except for two occasions which I'll get to shortly and which shed a bit of light on the matter at hand.

You're actually asking a lot of different questions here, which I'm going to try and sort out. Here's what I think you're asking, and forgive me if I seem to be putting words in your mouth.

Why are so many Jews lefties when they seem to be so smart? Why do they vote Democrat even if it seems to be against their interests? And why would so many vote for Obama, especially when they've seen how anti-Israel he is?

That about cover it?

A lot of it has to do with history. Many lefty Jews today are not only rigorously secular, but disdainful of those Jews whom are religious. That also explains why so many of these overtly secular Jews dislike Evangelicals, Mormons and other religious, pro-Israel Christians. To these Jews, all religion represents not only something they're trying to get away and distance themselves from, but way down deep, a secret source of shame for many. You don't destroy a part of whom you are without sustaining some damage.

Read this and see if it clears up the history a bit. The short version is that many Jews, once they were freed from the ghettos by Napoleon that they'd been literally locked up in for centuries made a determined attempt to assimilate. They really wanted to be good Germans, French, Austrians, Poles, what have you. It failed utterly. The majority of Europeans simply wouldn't allow it.

A number of these Jews made the obvious connection and allied themselves with the Left, especially the Marxists. They stupidly thought that their religion was the only basis for the psychotic hatred they faced, and that religion itself was the reason they were treated the way they were. So they not only gave up all semblance of their own religion, but turned to an ideology that likewise despised all religion while it was essentially creating its own.

To expand that a bit, here in America while there was never legal, government sponsored Jew hatred as there was in Europe and Muslim countries, there was quite a bit of de facto anti-semitism during the period when Jews were heavily migrating to America...say, the 1880's to about the 1920's or so and well into WWII.

So just as in Europe, some of these immigrants and quite a few of their offspring born here dropped the Orthodox Judaism they were raised with and much of their religious practices because the emphasis then was on assimilating..being, you know, real Americans like everyone else. That didn't work so well with many of the Republicans of that time or a lot of other people, but the Left was a somewhat different story, especially once FDR came on the scene. Ironic, of course, since he was instrumental in instituting quotas to stop too many Jews entering the Ivy League.

As for the communists, they were more than willing to recruit what Lenin aptly referred to as useful idiots.Conservative author David Horowitz, whom grew up as a 'red diaper baby' in a home where both parents were communists and under what was referred to as Party Discipline gives us an illuminating look at how this worked in his autobiography 'Radical Son.'

What changed things when it comes to the issue you're talking about was the Holocaust and the recreation of Israel. Realizing that much of the world either participated at worst or at best ignored what amounted to a war against defenseless Jews simply because they were Jews was a traumatic event that changed everything for Jews in places like America whom escaped.

It was a unique event in history for reasons I'm happy to explain to you any time if you'd like me to. In many quarters, it made openly expressed Jew hatred socially unacceptable, at least for a while. And it shamed the world into finally keeping the agreements made after WW I in the original League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the subsequent 1923 San Remo Agreement to create a Jewish State in their ancient homeland on the remaining 22% of the Palestine Mandate that was left after Jordan was given to the Arabs as their Palestinian State..

So for even aggressively secular, left leaning Jews like my parents, Israel was the issue that crossed all lines. It did so because they were the generation that was closest to the Shoah and they realized how important Israel's creation was to Jews in the Diaspora and their comfortable lives there. And yes, there was also some residual guilt involved, because many of the Jews surrounding President Roosevelt took an active part in successfully combating Jews who wanted the make the ongoing Shoah a major public issue and push FDR to make attempts to stop or at least slow down the carnage of Jews in Europe.

That Jewish identification with Israel especially became apparent after the miraculous Six Day War when Jews around the world suddenly realized they might have lost Israel and had to experience a second Holocaust while the world again watched and did nothing.

I mentioned that there were two times my devoutly Democrat parents didn't pull the lever for Democrats? One occasion was in 1972 when the Angry Left took over the party and the anti-Israel George McGovern was their candidate for president. The other time was in 1980, when Jimmie Carter ran for re-election.

My parents literally hated Nixon and Reagan and they weren't too pleased with yours truly either when I cast my very first vote ever for Ronaldus Maximus. But they simply weren't going to vote for anti-Israel candidates. So they just voted for a straight Democrat ticket otherwise and passed up voting for president in those elections.

So what changed that closeness to Israel? Well, three things - the birth and maturity of two generations much further removed from the Holocaust, the ascendancy of a center right government in Israel when the Labor party was literally tossed out of office after the Yom Kippur War fiasco and most of all, the continued movement of the Democrat Party to the far left.

As you no doubt know, many times political preferences are inherited. If Mom and Dad and most of the people you know vote Democrat, it's likely you will too when the time comes. As the party moved further and further left, many Jews migrated with it. Israel wasn't such an important issue to them any more. It was even even an embarrassment to them in some circles, especially as Israel's socialist beginnings were largely tossed aside along with the Labor government after the Yom Kippur War. A country with an entrepreneurial, capitalist culture, allied with the US against the Soviets, with a proud military history and religious underpinnings?

Is it any wonder a lot of Jews on the Left react to Israel the way a vampire does to garlic?

Leftist politics is their new religion and their new affiliation, not Israel. Especially now, after President Barack Obama, their new idol, was so successful in making support for Israel a partisan issue. This was a goal of his from the very beginning, which is why he and George Soros collaborated in forming and funding J-Street to attract far left Jews as an umbrella and a cover for themselves against accusations of anti-semitism.

There are quislings and traitors in every group. Intellectual smarts in a narrow field or a degree (especially given what today's universities are mostly turning out) not only doesn't change that, it doesn't necessarily square up with common sense or even self-preservation.

At this point, after the Iran deal and numerous other related doings by this president a few of these Jews are finally getting the message, now when it's too late. But many aren't, for the reasons I mentioned. Nor will they, and there's little reason to make the effort to change their minds or to worry overmuch over the fact. The Useful Idiots still exist, and many of them will remain their own worst enemies, as always. Think of it as sort of a Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.

Once President Obama essentially paved the way for the genocidal Iran regime to obtain nuclear weapons, a very common theme emerged among many of these people. They now called upon the same Jews who opposed the Iran sellout that they'd been demonizing for months to 'make up now and unite.'

There's a quaint Brooklyn expression my father (Z"l) of blessed memory used to use to address folks like these in similar situations. I'll just say that wasting any of my precious time with people like this is far from my mind indeed.

This sort of division is nothing new. As Sun Tzu once said, you're better off with ten men that show up on the battlefield than a hundred whom don't.

I don't know if you've ever been to a Passover Seder, but there's a part in it that goes back centuries and discusses four types of Jews, the Parable of the Four Sons - one Wise, one Wicked, one Simple and One Whom Does Not Know How To Ask.

The Wicked Son is characterized by his sneering arrogance and his distancing himself from his fellow Jews and from anything to do with G-d and from G-d's mitzvot, His commandments. The Haggadah, the Holy Book used in the Seder tells how the Wicked Son is rebuked and told that the rituals surrounding the Seder and G-d's miracles that freed the Jews from bondage were not meant for him, and had he been in Egypt then, he would not have been redeemed.

To plagiarize Solomon in Ecclesiastes just a bit, there's nothing new under the sun..only the player's names change.

It's time once again for the Watcher's Council's 'Weasel Of The Week' nominations, where we pick our choices to compete for the award of the famed Golden Weasel to a public figure who particularly deserves to be slimed and mocked for his or her dastardly deeds during the week. Every Tuesday morning, tune in for the Weasel of the Week nominations!

Nice Deb: I'm going to nominate the Democrats on the Benghazi committee because they were so eager to circle the wagons around the obviously corrupt and dishonest Hillary Clinton.. What makes them especially repulsive weasels is their gross (yet routine) left-wing projection - accusing the GOP of politicizing the Benghazi investigation as they themselves very blatantly politicize the proceedings.

It's hard to choose one of the committee Democrats over the others because they are all equally disgusting.

Violent Film Maker And Cop Hater Quentin Tarantino!

Puma By Design :My nomination for this week’s extra grimy character goes to Hollywood actor/director, Quentin Tarantino, who along with the Black Lives Matter movement celebrated the death of NYPD Officer, Randolph Holder under the guise of an anti-police rally this past weekend in Manhattan.

Officer Holder was shot in the forehead and killed on a pedestrian walkway along the East River/FDR Drive in Manhattan six days ago during a foot pursuit that resulted in the exchange of gunfire between law enforcement and a career thug/known gang member, age 30, with 28 arrests under his belt dating back to the age of 13.

Obviously, for cop haters such as Black Lives Matter, Quentin Tarantino, Marxist trust fund babies among others who celebrate the death of a law enforcement officer, October is a red banner month.

Officer Holder is the third law enforcement officer to die this month in the line of duty or from injuries that occurred in the line of duty and the fourth NYPD officer killed in the line of duty in the past eleven months giving those calling for the death of law enforcement reason to celebrate and celebrate they did.

Tarantino old enough to know better and revisiting the glory days of the 1960’s fired up the crowd at the festivities celebrations correction protests on Saturday in Washington Square Park, which called for an uprising against “police terror.”

Tarantino lead the barrage of verbal assaults on police labeling them “murderers.”
“When I see murders, I do not stand by . . . I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers….”

The useful idiots aka protesters many of whom I suspect were reliving their glory days as well from squatting in Zuccotti Park, stinking up downtown Manhattan, protesting capitalism and destroying small business a few years back (yeah them) hung on to every word.

Under the Black Lives Matter meme, the protesters mostly Caucasian Marxist trust fund babies unleashed waves of verbal assaults and threats against NYPD officers while displaying signs that read: “Rise Up! Stop Police Terror!” and “Murder with a badge is still murder.”

Tarantino who has made millions on the glorification of drugs, crime and other illegal activities acknowledged the “unfortunate timing” of the celebration, correction anti-cop protest stating, “It’s like this: It’s unfortunate timing, but we’ve flown in all these families to go and tell their stories . . . That cop that was killed, that’s a tragedy, too.”

“Flown in all these families” and countless others?

OF COURSE, as with the Occupy Wall Street squatters in Zuccotti Park that wrecked our City, the protesters were not even New Yorkers. (ASTROTURF brought in with the blessing of Bill de Blasio, Al Sharpton and the community organizer in the White House.)

Not only did Tarantino, Cornel West, Marxist trust fund babies and their comrades, Black Lives Matter activists disrespect our law enforcement, they disrespected the City of New York (again) and the family of Officer Holder struggling to come to grips with the loss of a loved one killed in service just days earlier.

NYC’s police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, is now calling for a boycott of all things Quentin Tarantino.

To that I say, HERE, HERE!

Well, there it is. What a despicable group of Weasels...ANY OF THEM COULD WIN! Check back Thursday to see which Weasel walks off with the statuette of shame!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum.

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Monday, October 26, 2015

Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Is America A House Divided Against Itself?

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD : When 16 gave his famous “House Divided” speech, Lincoln chose it because it was a biblical idea familiar to Americans. Quoting Jesus Christ: “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25). A nice ending segue into “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all of the other.”

Surviving things like a Civil war, Beatlemania, fiery race riots, massive civil mayhem during the Viet Nam war era may make America seem invulnerable to divisions from the past, many that still afflict nation states today.

Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort points out "Americans have sorted themselves geographically, economically, and politically into like-minded communities over the last three decades." One of Mr B's key findings was that the number of counties in which a presidential candidate of either party won the vote by a landslide nearly doubled between 1976 and 2004.

The maps depicting this shift offer visually compelling evidence of a dramatic decline in the competitive counties once prevalent in the American landscape. "People living in homogenous communities grow both more extreme and more certain in their beliefs" as a result "Congress has lost most of its moderate members and is mired in conflict."
If "the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart," will compromise bring us together? Not a laugh line, yet it's nigh impossible to imagine a compromise on stuff like federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Either taxes finance it or they can start a go fund me site.

"X used the "house divided" metaphor (Mk 3:22-27) to counter the accusation that he cast out demons with the power of Satan. Satan cannot be divided against himself. He is an irreducible unity. One cannot compromise with Satan; one can only overpower Satan. Abraham Lincoln invoked the passage in a somewhat similar vein. The United States could have only one character: it must be a union, and that union must repudiate slavery. In any other condition it would not be the United States. The coexistence of irreconcilable opposites was impossible; one side had to prevail and to impose its vision of the country."

Instead of reaching across the aisle or negotiation, prepare for victory or defeat.

Divisions au courrant are seemingly used by national leaders purposely set Americans against each other - often and specifically on things that simply cannot be changed (all apologies to Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King) like a persons race.

These relationships have long been, as Dunkelman puts it, "at the root of American community life," and encompass such different-minded acquaintances as "bridge partners, brothers in the Elks club, fellow members of the PTA." But these connections have withered in recent years, even as we stay close to those like-minded folks who inhabit our inner circles of friends and family, and are connected on an unprecedented scale by technology and social media to those farther away.

Without these vibrant, heterogeneous "middle-tier" relationships, Dunkelman argues, it may simply be much harder to build the sense of public trust and unity that allows people to stand up to big challenges together.

A good way to relieve the pressure on a divided polity is to keep government limited.

Bookworm Room: Yes, it is a house divided against itself because we've lost the center. Those Americans who vote in federal elections seem to have settled fairly implacably, and in fairly equal numbers, on either side of the political divide.

More significantly there is no common ground. In past years, when there was a problem, both sides saw the government as a vehicle to carry out change, although each side attributed a different role to the government and a different price tag. Of late, however, conservatives have come to realize that, thanks to a steady push to the Left for the last half century, government is the problem. Meanwhile, led by the Obam-ites, Progressives (or Leftists, if you will) see the government, not just as a facilitator towards the answer, but as the answer itself.

Obama broke this gridlock in 2008 by getting out black voters who traditionally sit out the election. (It's the white Democrats who are hysterical about preserving the black right to vote.Blacks, if one judges by their participation levels in elections, not so much).

In 2012, Obama again broke the gridlock, this time by galvanizing a smaller portion of blacks, while at the same time weaponizing the IRS to shut down effective conservative opposition to his policies. (A weaponization, incidentally, that will only get worse for conservatives because Lynch's DOJ declined to prosecute Lois Lerner, despite the fact that uncontradicted evidence shows that she violated federal laws and, in doing so, damaged the integrity of the election process.)

The one candidate who seems to be paying attention to these trends is Ted Cruz. Recognizing that Republicans can win only if they release on the polls a hitherto quiescent voter class, he's trying to do the mirror image of what Obama did with blacks: Cruz is seeking out conservatives who have retired from the federal election process because they believe it's a game rigged against them.

As for Trump, who seems to be sticking to the top of the polls, I continue to believe that he'll will flame out. There simply isn't substance behind the populist, often demagogic, rhetoric. Then again, it was none other than P.T. Barnum (who was, in many ways, Trump's predecessor) who noted that "there's a sucker born every minute." What's preventing people from realizing what's going on with Trump is that the media is propping him up, delighted that he's sucking the oxygen out of other more realistic Republican candidates.

The Glittering Eye:Yes, it is and divided in a way we haven't haven't seen since the Civil War. I'm afraid it's a bit late for a reconciliation and there may be a painful divorce ahead. There might be a strategy that could keep the Union together. Federalism and tolerance of differing points of view. So crazy an idea that it might work.

Laura Rambeau Lee,Right Reason : A nation is defined by it borders, cultures, and laws. Everywhere we look we see division in America. This division has been building for decades, being amplified and accelerated under the Obama administration.

The left knows in order to destroy America it must attack on many fronts. When I returned to college our American Studies professor told the class that “nationalism” was the biggest challenge to progressives (she meant socialists) achieving their goal of a better America. Our schools teach our youth to be ashamed of our history. The curriculum focuses on slavery and other sins against aggrieved peoples and the myth of The American Dream. This is a concerted effort to pit one group or class of people against other groups or classes.

The ease with which this indoctrination has been able to mold the developing minds of our youth is frightening, but those who wish to destroy our country have the blueprint. These methods have been successful in the past. One only has to look at Nazi Germany to realize how controlling the education of children is the primary tool in achieving a society’s destruction. Through public education an entire generation of millennials believes America is not an exceptional nation; no better than any other and in many instances worse. They have been taught to mock and ridicule the traditional values and mores that are the foundation upon which this country was established. They consider themselves victims and look to government to solve all of their problems.

People like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton appeal to this need to blame others and promise to help them out of whatever negative position they find themselves in, whether it be an inability to find employment or crushing student loan debt. In addition, we see too many self-proclaimed young conservatives leaning towards socialism or libertarianism, particularly when it comes to social issues. They take their cue from “moderate” Republicans like Jeb Bush who consider illegal aliens coming across our borders as committing “acts of love.” The rule of law that once provided certainty has been turned upside down and inside out depending on the situation and the whims of those in positions of power.

The Democrat Party has been infiltrated by socialists and communists, yet most voters fail to recognize it and when challenged Democrats simply deny it. We have a generation of young adults who do not understand the dangers of socialism who will be voting for president in 2016. Many believe they should vote for Hillary Clinton simply because it is time for the first woman to be president. They do not care about her positions on policy or her questionable character; to them it is all about “social justice.

Progressives understand the time involved in fundamentally transforming a society and the necessity of focusing on the youth and their education. Conservatives must understand it will take time to reverse the process. We need people of honor and conviction to speak out and educate the people about the American values we hold dear to counter the emotional appeals of the left. We need teachers who will educate our children and teach them how to think, not what to think. We must take back the control of our education system.

Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

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Friday, October 23, 2015

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"“Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?” " - Peter Hitchens

“The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.” - CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Schools train you to be ignorant" -Frank Zappa

“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool”- Plato

I was livid this morning. One of my children asked me to quiz her about rhetorical fallacies, which she was studying for a test. The teacher had put the examples together himself and they included such gems as saying it’s a logical fallacy to argue that guns are tools in the same way hammers are tools. Another example was that it’s a logical fallacy to argue against gay marriage. To give students an insight into good arguments against logical fallacies, he directed the students to Jon Stewart’s hyper-partisan The Daily Show. Indoctrination much?

When I complained to my resident Leftist, all I got was bewilderment. Guns are evil, gay marriage should be accepted by all, and Jon Stewart was the smartest, most informative man in television — so why am I fussing? The fact that all of those represent partisan views and the principle that they therefore should not be introduced on the taxpayers’ dime completely eluded him. School, after all, is there to teach students how to “think.”

School indoctrination is a sore subject with me, since it’s endemic in Marin, as it is in any school district that has a teacher’s union. Math is tainted both by Common Core and the fuzzy math approach that’s meant to give a pass to women and minorities who apparently struggle with actual math (you know, the kind where the results are correct).

As someone who’s bad at math (Common Core’s crazy complications are familiar to me because that’s the way they were teaching back in the San Francisco public schools’ 1960s/1970s experimental phase), I recognize the advantage of being able to reach roughly correct answers for such inconsequential things as calculating tips, measuring something that doesn’t need precise dimensions, or keeping vague track of a family budget. I also recognize what a weak reed this fuzzy math is. When the situation demands precision, I struggle.

English as taught in America’s public schools is a joke. I’ve already shared here my fury at the way an English teacher in Sandy Hook’s wake, handed out to the students strong gun-control articles. I politely protested (because my child, after all, was a hostage to grades in his class, but got nowhere). While the students get Leftist politics and lots of sex in their English classrooms, the students emerge without fundamentals such as grammar, spelling, structure, and narrative. Eileen Toplansky describes in heartbreaking detail trying to teach under-educated American youngsters when they reach college.

As the recently AP U.S. History fight showed, history is taught through a purely Marxist, anti-American lens. The books subtly and not-so-subtly tell those pliant young minds that America is the root of all evil and that the purifying answer to our nation’s wrongs is top down collectivism.

It doesn’t seem to occur to these geniuses that the things about which they complain — whether slavery, Indian relocations, Jim Crow laws, etc. — were only able to happen because of government power. The corollary is that diffusing government power dilutes a nation’s ability to do things that bug Leftists.

Typically, each Leftist cadre assumes that, when it acquires unlimited power, it will get it right. That’s why Bernie, who shrilly screams for a government that uses its guns to confiscate individual wealth, is looked upon as some type of savior, rather than the power-hungry, crazed madman he really is.

Lastly, there’s the wreckage of science in America’s public schools. The kids still get taught useful basic stuff, such as chemistry and biology, but the higher up they go, the more tainted it gets.

I have in front of me the textbook used in our local school’s AP Environmental Science class. Published by Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning, G. Tyler Miller’s and Scott E.Spoolman’s 14th edition of Environmental Science purports to be a comprehensive textbook, teaching children everything they need to know about the natural world that surrounds us.

In the introduction to teachers (p. xiii), we learn that the book is all about “sustainability — the integrating theme of this book.” This theme leads to the boast that, in the new edition,

Climate change is emphasized with new coverage on the warming of the world’s lakes, climate change tipping points, and innovative [and, no doubt, prohibitively expensive] efforts to reduce methane and soot emissions.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know..

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Yes,it's time to present this week's statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week's nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner...the envelope please...

Disney's New Anti-American Far Left 'Captain America'

JoshuaPundit: If you remember the comic book heroes of your youth, you will be astounded by what's become of them lately.

Like America's movies, they used to be a part of America's culture that nurtured heroic values and provided role models for America's youth.

Nowadays, Superman has renounced his American citizenship in favor of working for the UN because "I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy."

Like a lot of corporations who promote Leftist ideas, Disney loves illegal alien workers and abusing H1B visas on tech workers to keep wages on the plantation low and keep the servants from getting any ideas above their place.

They've even got the 'right wingers' in this comic wearing the hoods so beloved of Democrats in the not so Good Old Days. And of course, Captain Marvel's race has changed, for obvious reasons.

I once heard Rush Limbaugh say some time ago that 'Liberalism is like an acid that distorts and ruins everything it touches." At the time I thought that was over the top, but I now concede he was largely correct..except, of course, I never use the word 'liberalism' to describe these prog fascists.

From the day they enter school, turn on a TV, or yes, read a comic book, America's kids are subject to this kind of mind rape. That's why a willful perversion like this is important.

"From small things, big things someday come." - Nick Lowe

There's not much else to say about something like this. Weasels like Disney who pervert American values and do their bit to sabotage its culture are going to get their just reward one day when one of two things happens. Either the country will simply revolt against this sort of thing and react harshly, or the time comes when it faces a major crisis but has been so undermined by weasels like this that it is simply unable to muster the courage and sacrifice necessary to defend itself.

Enjoy your well-deserved Golden Weasel. You'll never understand until it's too late, but it's going to mean a lot more than some of the other awards you've gotten in the end.

Well, there it is.Check back next Tuesday to see who next week's nominees for Weasel of the Week are!Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum, and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

It's no secret that the Clintons and the Obamas despise each other, so t his didn't take any crystal ball to figure out...all you had to do was to piece together certain events to realize that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had come to a rapprochement.

The amount of media coverage given to the scandal surrounding the Clinton's 'charitable foundation', the e-mail servers scandal and the scads of articles championing 'good old likable honest Joe Biden' as the Democrat savior from the usual suspects all had to have been done at the bidding of the Obama regime, as usual. otherwise, none of it would have happened.

But as I've written elsewhere, Mrs. Clinton had a few cards of her own to play. Just having her attorneys offer congress candid testimony on a number of things in exchange for immunity from prosecution could make Barack Hussein Obama's final months in office a nightmare.

And she also had another convenient weapon. It shouldn't be any surprise, but the Democrats choose their nominee via an extremely undemocratic process. Instead of the party's voters picking their nominee via votes in the primaries, the real power is in the hands of a large number of party insiders called 'super delegates' whom have the power to override whatever choices the voters in the primary might make. That's why Mrs. Clinton wasn't the nominee in 2008.

It's become known that a number of the female super delegates who are in positions of power in the party have anointed Hillary based on her gender and have let it be known that any attempt to sideline her would have extreme consequences.

Even Barack Obama has to deal with reality sometimes. So the two sat down and had a chat, probably a few days or so before the debate, or perhaps Mr. Bill made a quick trip to the White House.

Then, despite a number of voter polls showing that Bernie Sanders won that debate, the usual media suspects trumpet it as a Clinton triumph, often in surprisingly similar language using terms like 'polished performance'... not that they'd ever collude on something like that, right?

Biden got the call from the White House and now, he's bowing out after a suitable interval to preserve appearances. He'll endorse Hillary when he's told it's time for him to do so.

Poor old Bernie! Even an irascible, ranting old Commie should have known better than to think that the Dems would ever put a Jew on the national ticket, even an irreligious, anti-Israel one. The last time they made that mistake was in 2000 with Joe Lieberman, and it cost them the Muslim vote and likely the election.

So what did Mrs. Clinton or her husband offer Obama in return?

Author and media figure Ed Klein is a source I personally view with a certain amount of skepticism. But he had a story out not too long ago that sounds fairly plausible. According to Klein, he was told by someone at the White House that President Obama's terms for endorsing Biden and campaigning for him included Biden allowing the president to choose Biden's running mate and a commitment from Biden to agree to serve only one term.

According to Klein, Obama's choice for Biden's running mate was former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Aside from being black, Governor Patrick does share Barack Obama's ideology, so that much makes sense.

If that was what Barack Obama wanted, I have no doubt the Clintons would make that deal in a New York minute.

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?